This Modern Life, This Modern Culture, is for Fools

When I have low periods, times that this feckless American Culture grates on me, when I feel the anger gathering, I generally do not allow myself to write here. I can easily come across as a fount of vitriol, and who needs that? But at times, I let it out.

Let’s start with the upcoming Presidential election. We have, on both sides, some of the most idiotic, cowardly, perfidious, moronic, wimpy, and useless candidates that I have seen in my 40+ years on this sometimes-seemingly-God-forsaken planet. And yet I have seen, as always, people lined up like thoughtless lemmings behind slogans and nonsense. It’s either ‘take America back’ or ‘Feel the Bern’ or some other farcical pabulum that has no meaning whatsoever. Take America back from whom, precisely? That’s what I always ask my right-wing friends who spout that party line. Were we, the so-called ‘conservatives’, out of town when the so-called ‘liberals’ took over? Was the coup televised? Did it involve force? Did we have no choice in the matter? Of course we had a fucking choice. We sat our fat asses behind the aforementioned TV and watched everything change. Now we have the temerity to pretend ‘liberals’ are the real issue?

On the left-wing side, it’s all feelings and equality, two things that will never lead a country toward anything but its own demise. Social justice might feel good to all these types of folks, but that’s only because they haven’t lived long enough to see that damage that they are conjuring with their never-ending babbling about both. It’s also because so many of them seem to lack the ability to understand context, history, and human behavior. It baffles me at times to see just how bullheaded and wrong these nuts can be.

Then, there’s the daily life in America. Do you work in the American office building? Do you do more than simply go in, put in your 8, spout the party line, and go home? Then you know precisely what I mean. Someone in management who hasn’t the slightest bit of real knowledge about their job nor yours will make determinations on your job based on whims, feelings, and the general BS they pick up in some ‘Leadership’ class. I’ve sat in those Leadership classes before. There is no leadership being taught. Unless by ‘leadership’ they mean cowering to every pandering rationalization about some new shiny object that they come across. I grow more weary of it all by the week.

If you’re a man and you want to find a woman to date, I hope that you’re ready to dance, son. Because that’s what you’ll do. Dance. You’ll have to cater to every whim she has. You’ll need to know “game” or some bullshit philosophy. Because you’re not dealing with rational rules anymore. “Netflix and chill” is a phrase people use in the hookup culture. How do rational human begins even begin to deal with the childish nature of modern hookups?

If you’re a woman wanting to date, good luck to you as well. You’ll have to wade through dozens of Tinder profiles, refuse dick pics, and generally, if you hope to find a man in the bunch, you’ll be quite out of luck. Our new ‘feminized’ world you may blame for this. As you praise your Gloria Steinems, Hillary Clintons, Camille Paglias, and all their ilk for ‘bringing women to the forefront,’ remind yourself that they also brought these perverse man-boys to the forefront as well.

You do not get one without the other. Or did you not know this? Likely as not, you didn’t. Because your feminist ‘heroes’ did not have you in mind at all. They had themselves in mind. So they didn’t bother to warn you of what happens when you force the male of the species to culturally play by feminine rules: you get man-boy monsters.

There is so little left in this American culture for the rational mind. For the mind that sees beyond the basic pabulum that society lives by and moves with. This is, of course, nothing new: history cycles. We are not, in any form, enlightened about anything. We just have shinier and better mirrors that cause us to make Narcissus look downright humble. I find these little black boxes we call ‘smart’ phones to be eerily similar to the black mirror one uses in magic to conjure demons. And it looks to me as if our black mirrors conjure up many demons for us, whether we want them to or not. Some ancient cultures believed as well that cameras stole part of our soul. Just based simply on anecdotal evidence of the soulless nature of so many today, and how many goddamned selfies people take, I’m thinking that perhaps these cultures might have been onto something. A photon of light communicates—it contains data. I sometimes wonder if every time our smartphones capture those photons in those selfies, it’s taking just a bit more of what makes the selfie-taker human.

Humanity will never be completely sane, nor will societies adopt cultures that are completely sane. This is how we are as human beings. And yet I long for something at least a bit less crazy, something a bit less farcical, and something full of far fewer lies and rationalizations as to why this current culture is acceptable. Because this current culture is not, by any means, acceptable to the rational mind.